Minerals for paper: enhancing evaluation procedures

摘要

Procedures employed in evaluating new mineral deposits to often lag behind the paper industry's increasing expectations of mineral performance, resulting in disappointment, needless cot and wasted time.Minerals' influence on paper quality depends on the pore-structure change it creates. While mineral particle morphology and size distribution are key contributory factors, the final character of a paper's pore-structure/particle packing density is determined by a combination of the prevailing paper processing conditions and the physical interaction of associated raw materials. However, traditional mineral evaluation procedures fail to reproduce pore-structures representative of the finished paper. As a result, a sufficient representation of a mineral's potential is delayed until costly papermaking/coating studies can be performed.